Doctors Of JuD Apply For Indian Visa ‘To Help Kashmiris’

New Delhi: In a deliberate provocation, a team of doctors, nurses and other paramedical staff belonging to Hafiz Saeed’s Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) have applied for an Indian visa “to help the Kashmiris”. Saeed, wanted by India for his role in the Mumbai attacks, announced last night that his team will seek permission to go to Kashmir which has been on the boil for more than two weeks over the killing of Hizbul militant Burhan Wani.

Saeed had also claimed he had received a call from Wani, which Home Minister Rajnath Singh said amounted to an “open confession” of the Pakistani terrorist’s role in fomenting trouble in Kashmir. “The entire world should take note of it,” Singh said. Last week, the mastermind of the 2008 Mumbai attack had led a ‘Kashmir Caravan’ from Lahore to Islamabad and vowed to march towards Jammu and Kashmir “till the Kashmiris get freedom”.

The founder of the Lashkar-e-Taiba, who carries a $10-million bounty on his head again demanded the Pakistan government immediately suspend “diplomatic and trade” ties with India, expel the Indian ambassador here and recall its envoy from New Delhi. The Pakistan government has also taken a stridently anti-India line since mass protests erupted in the Kashmir Valley after Wani’s killing on July 8.

Taking umbrage at Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s statement that “Kashmir will one day become Pakistan”, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Saturday replied that his dream of the state becoming a part of his country “will not be realised even at the end of eternity”.

Swaraj also said Pakistan is perpetrating terror activities through Hafiz Saeed. “Even more condemnable than these deplorable attempts from across our border to incite violence and glorify terrorists is the fact that these attempts have been undertaken by Pakistan’s state machinery in active partnership with UN-designated terrorist Hafiz Saeed and other leading terrorists belonging to internationally proscribed organisations,” she said.